The video is tightly framed around Justin Trudeau in the middle of a Montreal crowd, days before last fall’s federal election. Off-screen, a reporter’s voice says, “As recently as yesterday evening, your party was defending Mr. Gagnier’s actions—” Trudeau nods “—saying essentially that he played by the rules.” Trudeau nods again, tight-lipped and wide-eyed.

Dan Gagnier, the party’s campaign co-chair, resigned days before the election amid a scandal over an email he wrote providing lobbying advice to a pipeline company. “This morning—” the reporter continues, but boos from the crowd interrupt him. Trudeau extends his arm boldly, palm flat like a stop sign. He looks off-camera to where the boos began. “Hey,” he says. “We have respect for journalists in this country. They ask tough questions, and they’re supposed to, okay?” He turns back to the reporter. “Sorry, go ahead.”

That attitude is a welcome change for journalists, but what reporters need more than a friendly face is an upgrade from ancient legislation that’s making their jobs harder. Since the October election, the prime minister has charmed reporters in a way his predecessor rarely tried to do. Last November, he even emerged from the private cabin of a plane en route to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila to converse with journalists travelling with him. Charm aside, however, many journalists are wondering if he also has the guts to tackle the flawed Access to Information (ATI) Act.

Under the Conservatives, Newspapers Canada’s annual audit of the freedom of information system gave the feds a failing grade for speed of disclosure in 2015. The audit tracks how well governments comply with their respective freedom of information legislations and compares practices among jurisdictions. In the most recent audit, almost 450 access requests were sent to various levels of government, and 70 percent were answered within the standard response time of 30 days. But many came back in non-machine-readable formats, making them difficult to work with electronically. Newspapers Canada considered these requests denied in part. In Ottawa, over half of the requests for electronic files took more than 60 days.

Often, requests come back so censored (anything from names and dates to full pages can be blocked out) that journalists have no access to the information they should have the right to see. Some reporters used Twitter and the hashtag #cdnfoi to show their dismay. This January, Dean Beeby, senior reporter for CBC’s Ottawa Parliamentary Bureau, tweeted, “Need laws to suspend ‘routine’ destruction of gov’t docs frm day of elxn [right] to day next gov’t takes office.” A week later, Sean Holman, a journalism professor at Mount Royal University, retweeted the J-Source article “Why Saskatchewan is Canada’s black hole of policing information.”

During the election, the Liberal platform boasted important changes to the ATI act. The party proclaimed that government data and information should be open by default and planned to give the Information Commissioner power to issue binding orders for disclosure. It also proposed eliminating all associated fees except the $5 filing fee. Last year, the total assessed fees were $74,000. Notably, the Liberals promised to make the prime minister and ministers’ offices subject to the ATI act. In addition, the party vowed to review the act every five years.

Beeby files thousands of freedom of information requests a year. He’s still getting requests back that were processed by the Harper government. “The act has fossilized,” Beeby says. It hasn’t been updated since coming into effect in July 1983, when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister.

Re-evaluation of the act will help, but the government also needs to increase staff and make the operation more independent. Justin Ling, a reporter at Vice, says, “If anything, increasing the scope and breadth and reach of the ATI act without corresponding investment is going to just break the system further into disrepair.”

Trudeau’s flat-palm stop signal against silencing the press is going to turn into an unreturned high-five if his government is unable to keep the promises the Liberal Party made during its campaign. Holman is skeptical of how long Prime Minister Trudeau can last before he is “seduced by secrecy.” He said observers need look no further than the Harper government, which came into power in 2006, criticizing the Liberals and promising an open government. The Conservatives later tried to eliminate media scrums after cabinet meetings.

It’s too early to tell if Trudeau will be able to uphold his image as friend to the press. Susan Delacourt, a long-time Ottawa reporter for the Toronto Star who now does freelance work, noticed a change—basically overnight—once Trudeau was elected. “Look,” she says. “I lived near Harper. I never ran into him. Two days after Trudeau was elected, I bumped into him walking around.” As ministers’ offices are being filled with deputies and administrative staff, she is hopeful the change will stay.

But Beeby, Holman and Ling are wary of applauding the prime minister just yet. “Eventually, people will develop doubt and skepticism of this government as they did for the last,” says Ling. “And that’s good.”

In his book Mass Disruption, John Stackhouse writes extensively about the effect of the digital revolution that’s been raging for the past decade. “If newspapers [are] to survive… old school [needs] to meet new school in a hurry.”

Unfortunately, the industry doesn’t seem to be doing so well, what with La Presse and Nanaimo Daily News ceasing print earlier this month and Postmedia Network shares dropping 50 cents. Not a huge drop, sure, except for the fact that RBC cut the price target to zero dollars.

In a Business News Network video eerily foreshadowing the bloodletting across the Postmedia chain last week, Paul Godfrey said, “You’ve got to eliminate duplications throughout the organization.” He wasn’t talking about the debt the paper’s in (over 50 percent of it in American dollars) but the actual gears in his organization’s news clock.

Stackhouse warned: “The news media [needs] to adapt to the age of Google, staying light when it [comes] to costs, identifying audiences and following them and, perhaps most critically, giving voice to those audiences, even as we [ask] them to pay for our journalism.”

According to Godfrey, all his papers are still making money. How much, he doesn’t say, but he admits it’s not from print revenue. He calls it the “Google effect”. It’s understandable: North American newspaper revenue fell over 20 billion dollars from 2006 to 2011. In Canadian newspaper advertising, the revenue is almost a billion dollars less than it was a decade ago.

“Nobody’s exempt from this,” said Godfrey. It’s just the way the trends have gone; most people absorb and curate their news feeds by swiping and tapping, not turning pages. That said, Postmedia bought the Sun chain in April last year and saw an increase in gross revenue. Godfrey assures it was not an emotional decision (he was once the CEO there) but a business one.

“Our shares don’t sell,” he said dismissively of the price drop. “Most of them are owned by hedge funds in the States.” He’s looking for revenue in other places.

Now, it’s about containing costs.

After squandering a few minutes in the lobby of the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel—so many elevators—I found myself deep in the bowels of the building facing a garish black and red plaid poster board archway that proclaimed “BEAVER LODGE.”

I turned to pick up my badge from the matching plaid poster board-clad registration booth and soon clipped the nametag to my collar. “Welcome to the 2015 FIPP World Congress!” said no one. Also, my last name was spelled wrong.

Once seated in the main session area, wedged so tightly between two men in suits that we had to syncopate our inhales, my time at FIPP had officially begun.

FIPP, the International Federation of Periodical Publishers, celebrated its 40th World Congress last week with a hoedown at Evergreen Brickworks, snazzy cocktail hours at the CN Tower and Ripley’s Aquarium and, perhaps most memorably, peculiar skewered marshmallows rolled in powdered graham crackers available for the duration of the conference on isolated tables and trays in the gaudy BEAVER LODGE.

In between networking (read: snack) breaks where the strange marshmallow population hardly fluctuated, I listened to “fireside chats” with CEOs of media companies and panels on topics like the “enduring power of print.” That second one was sponsored by UPM, a paper supplier.

Marshmallows aside (because they were), here’s a breakdown of what I really learned:

The Editor as Equilibrium

Now, more than ever before, the role of editor demands you assume control and explore all outlets to retain a cohesive publication. Olivier Royant, editor-in-chief of Paris Match, illuminated this when he pulled up a photo of a suave boat captain during a panel. He said that this guy was what the editor of a magazine was like when he first came to Paris Match as a reporter years ago. Today, he feels he’s more like the second photo he shows: a plate spinner with several presumably porcelain dishes balanced on slim wooden poles on his arms, legs and feet. “Sometimes the plates break,” he said. But you spin on.

You Are a Brand

Take a look at Cottage Life. They’re selling furniture now. Yes, you read that right, furniture. When Al Zikovitz, president and CEO of the enterprise, noticed that Roots was selling sweaters with their brand plastered shamelessly on the chest, he saw a marketing opportunity: “People will pay us to advertise for us.” Sweaters lead to t-shirts and hats, to TV shows and trade shows, and today to candles and indoor and outdoor furniture. Since merging with Blue Ant Media, the magazine’s revenue has gone up 25 percent between 2013 and 2015, and merchandise and e-commerce revenue has increased 160 percent in the last year. The magazine is no longer the heart of the business: it’s the customer, the cottager.

You Can Go “Hyper Niche”

Like Spacing did, opening a retail store and selling subway stop buttons and Home is Toronto tees with back issues of the magazine stacked unassumingly and unimpressively by a pillar as if to say “what magazine? We’re just cool…”

But Keep the Goal in Mind

Unabashedly, that goal is money. Not money for the sake of itself, but money to keep the dream of the magazine alive. Revenue is so (and obviously so) vital to survival.

Craig Barnwell, head of customer knowledge at Dow Jones, suggested everyone try to create “members” out of their subscribers, making your magazine like a “club where everyone feels comfortable and shares a common attitude and values.”

Be that a club where there is an agreement on the best-scented Cottage Life candle or a common understanding of the hippest new button from Spacing, it’s time for Canadian magazines to think bigger business if they hope to stay above the surface in this rapid wave of changing media.

The next congress will be held in Warsaw, Poland, in October 2017. I hope no pierogies are skewered in any marketing campaigns.